Our customers tell us time and time again that they install many apps and soon get bored with them or no longer find them useful. This is a trend that we typically see with “niche” apps, such as pregnancy apps that are built to manage one thing — your pregnancy. Imagine what you could do with an app that could manage your quest to get pregnant, your pregnancy, and your life after baby. This is what LifeTopix does — and more. Keep reading to learn how.

Pregnancy apps generally include the following features (but not all in one app): photo journals; text journals; logging (mood, energy, appetite, morning sickness, cravings, weight, measurements, medication, fitness, nutrition, etc.); MD visit planning; graphical charts; baby shower planning; baby shopping lists; pregnancy to-dos; favorite websites; and contraction counters. What’s great about LifeTopix is it’s completely user configurable so you can decide what you want to track. You can track everything from the days you’re ovulating to planning your child’s college fund.

Note: This post was created using a pre-released version of LifeTopix, which will be coming soon to the Apple App Store.

Charting Fertility

Each month, there’s a window of time (12 to 24 hours) during which an egg can be fertilized. You can track the times that you’re most fertile in your LifeTopix calendar. I recommend adding a LifeTopix Bookmark to this handy ovulation calculator from WebMD. Let it calculate the times it believes you’re fertile and add those times to your calendar. The following shows an example of your calendar with appointments.

Scheduling Doctor’s Appointments

You can schedule your doctor’s appointments, midwife appointments, and tests such as ultrasounds the same way that you chart fertility. If you prefer to use your Google Calendar or Device’s calendar, LifeTopix works seamlessly with both.

Creating Pregnancy Journals

Keeping a journal of your pregnancy is a wonderful way to record this special time in your life through your thoughts and photos. With LifeTopix, you can use the Notes + Files topic to record text, audio, video, photos, and drawings. The best way to get started is to create a Pregnancy Project, and then add a Note to the project. And if you use Evernote, you can also add your Evernote notes. In addition, printing capabilities are included. The following example shows the Notes view in which your journal would appear.

Logging Pregnancy Statistics

LifeTopix enables you to log just about any type of stat that you can possibly dream up. These stats are very helpful for fertility doctors, your OBGYN, and for your own reference. Examples of items to track might be mood, energy, appetite, cravings, morning sickness, blood pressure, glucose levels, prenatal vitamins, exercise, nutrition, calories, measurements, weight, and meditation. In addition, you can combine many of these items into multi-topic log forms and view a graphical representation of combined items to recognize any trends (such as meditation and mood). The following example shows data for waist circumference, represented in centimeters over time, in a graphical format.

Planning Baby Shower Events

An item that is unique to LifeTopix, as opposed to special Pregnancy Apps, is the ability to plan entire events, such as baby showers. LifeTopix enables you to add tasks, checklists, appointments, reminders, bookmarks, files, audio, photos, video, notes, expenses, services, and shopping items to events. You can also manage the invitees, including keeping track of responses and emailing all invitees at once with updates.

Recording Baby Shower Gifts Received

When you’re expecting, you’re likely to receive many gifts. With LifeTopix, you can keep track of all the gifts that you received during your pregnancy and after the baby arrives. When you record each gift, you can create reminders to make sure you send a thank you card. The following shows an example of the gift record.

Creating Shopping Lists for You and Baby

When you’re preparing for the baby, there are several items that you need to purchase for feeding, diapering, clothing, etc. You can find a great list of items to bookmark at Newparent.com. Once you decide on the items that you wish to purchase, you can create your shopping lists directly in LifeTopix. In shopping lists, LifeTopix calculates the total cost of each item based on the quantity to help you with planning your budget. You can also check off the items as you purchase them. You can add a seller, photos, notes, and product details to each item if you need more detail while you’re shopping.

The following shows an example of shopping lists in LifeTopix.

Tracking Your Pregnancy To-dos

Many moms-to-be can feel very overwhelmed during their pregnancy. Keeping track of the many things that are necessary to prepare, be healthy, and manage life can be quite challenging. Keeping a to-do list can lower your stress level by helping you not worry about all the things that are bouncing around in your head. There are plenty of resources to help you prepare. A site that includes a very helpful set of checklists is Babyzone. In LifeTopix, you can create tasks for items that might linger for a while; and alternatively, create checklists for items that you quickly check off each day or week. The following shows an example of checklists in LifeTopix.

Remembering Your Favorite Pregnancy Websites

With LifeTopix Bookmarks, you can use your device to quickly access all of the websites that are useful for your pregnancy, documents that you’ve stored, and user names and passwords for your favorite websites or pregnancy forums. The following screenshot shows an example of bookmarks in LifeTopix.

Recording Kick Counts

Currently, LifeTopix doesn’t include automated functionality for tracking kicks; however, it can be accomplished via a manual process. According to American Pregnancy, “The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends that you time how long it takes you to feel 10 kicks, flutters, swishes, or rolls. Ideally, you want to feel at least 10 movements within 2 hours. You will likely feel 10 movements less than that.”

For kick counts, you can set a reminder or appointments in LifeTopix to remind you to record movements as directed by your doctor or midwife. In LifeTopix, this can be accomplished by creating a Wellness Log form, and selecting the options that appear in the screenshot below:

So if you’re thinking beyond nine months, LifeTopix will be a great app for you. You can start planning your child’s college fund; manage your household expenses; manage your fitness to lose any post pregnancy weight; keep track of service providers, such as babysitters and day care providers; and the list goes on and on. You can learn more about LifeTopix at the Apple App Store.